Rev Price going up, is Valentina worth it?

[Kay C Lan]

On 11/21/06, Ted Mills <tm1274 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I have not been able to test Valentina to see it's capabilities and to see
> if it is as user friendly as Rev,


Unfortunately nothing is as user friendly as Rev, I think maybe you should
asking whether it is as user friendly as mySQL, Excel or Oracle.

What I will say is that it has a very good user list like this one, and I
have it on very good authority, Lynn Fredricks if I recall correctly, that
they keep Ruslan Zasukhin on a caffeine drip so that he can answer any and
every call for help. On this list there are regular moans that we don't see
enough posts from the Rev Honchos, although that is improving with Lynn's
frequent posts. Not so on the Valentina lists, Ruslan (owner, brains and
driving force behind Valentina) seems to post 24hr a day 7 days a week.

as well as, if I do not buy it at the same
> time I will have to pay more for it. Anyone have any thoughts about
> whether
> I should buy it or not? Or is there another database solution that would
> be
> simple for a newbie to learn that would be worth while to look at?


Your sign off didn't include company contact details so it's hard to tell
whether you are a hobbiest, a professional programmer looking for another
tool in their toolbox, or a company looking for a solution. Each of these
will have a vastly different price/performance ratio.

I'm a hobbiest so 'FREE' is always a draw card.

I've used Rev with mySQL and found it an excellent combination. As my
databases are for me I have no licensing issues with mySQL, if your
databases are headed elsewhere I believe licensing can be a headache. If you
go this route and your on a Mac, get yourself CocoaMySQL-SBG, it eliminates
lots of the guess work - is it the DB engine, my DB, my data, my code or Rev
that's not working?.

Fortunately you appear to be in the market for Rev at the right time. My
understanding is that if you buy before Dec 1, then you'll be entitled to
the next update (Lynn, Heather, correct me if I'm wrong) which will include
AltSQLite.

If you're a hobbiest, or you're looking for a embedded database (single
user) solution, this is great - one of the reason I've just forked over for
another year's renewal:-) Chipp will probably tell you that AltSQLite is as
easy to learn as Rev, I wouldn't know I haven't used it, yet, but when the
new Rev is out and I do get to give AltSQLite a spin, I know that if I hit
any walls this list will provide the answers.

Which finally brings us to Valentina. As a hobbiest, the price, not the
product, makes it a less likely choice. But if you go the package you
mentioned, which includes Valentina Studio, you'd have a good stepping off
point. I tested 1.11 which didn't come with Val Studio so it made tracking
down errors very difficult. Val Studio is like CocoaMySQL-SBG, it can help
quickly locate the source of errors. And again, the on list support is
excellent.

If your needs are more professional then that's out of my league to answer
and I guess you'd need to provide a little more details: embedded,
client-server, 5 users or 5000 users, 5k records or 5m and what are you
currently using/familiar with.

I've probably given you more questions than answers, and the clocks still
ticking:-)